Posts Tagged 'Gdkp'

A while ago I was in a GDKP once where we made a decision to kick two players for low dps. They were not performing as to their gear, and logs seemed to show an activity level of about 50 % each. They were a Pally healer, and a Rogue and from the same guild – of which they were the only two on.

We weren’t sure who the Pally was healing, or when because their affective healing was just above a ret Pally -and they weren’t using beacon. The Rogue’s attacks were discussed by people who knew Rogues, and it was determined that when they were doing damage most of their damage was auto attacking. Neither of them were on vent after repeated requests the whole run to get on. (The loot rules were clear – no vent, no loot – but I’ve never seen this enforced.) So they weren’t involved in the discussion about their failures.

The theory was they were being duel boxed.

It’s an interesting way to make easy gold. Duel box them through a GDKP. Not likely to be noticed, one is a dps melee, and the other a healer – If they hadn’t had been from the same guild, separately they would have been dismissed as poor players, and probably continued to be carried. Their extremely poor performance was noticed by several ” What is that Rogue doing… ” Healers complained” Why isn’t the pally using beacon..” So they were looked at closer. It was also noted that they had bidded a few times, but were not buying up loot either, and someone picked up their activity on the basis that comments were made about ” the pally just standing there most of the time”

There was enough evidence – and this was put forward to the raid, that they were trying to put in less effort and get rewarded twice for it. A Vote was called

“Click No to kick on a ready check”

They weren’t on vent listening, and most people auto click yes on ready checks.

The vote passed, it was explained briefly in raid chat why they were kicked, and they were removed from the group.

It’s an implied rule in a GDKP that you perform reasonably to your class and gear expectations. Your not paying for a carry where it doesn’t matter what you do, your still expected to reasonably participate, you don’t want a GDKP where everyone is so well geared they don’t need loot, nor do you want a raid of poorly geared people because then you don’t get far enough to kill anything.

I’m not so sure if it were their performance which made the vote pass, or that fact that we thought we had been cheated. Bringing two underperforming toons to a GDKP raid, and expecting to profit x 2 was not considered fair. Did we have proof? – a case was put forward, supported by unrelated people, a key factor being their active time which was determined irrefutable by a live log. If they had just sucked then we would have kept them, but the majority felt strongly enough about this deception to kick them.

I voted to kick.

The RL tried to be as fair about this as possible – gave them an opportunity to explain and we had enough material for the ‘case’ but still we have no proof that they were a duel boxer, only a probability. They were peer judged based on the measuring tools we had our disposal.

I did another raid recently as a holy priest, and we had a disc priest healing as well – the raid tried to peer judge the Disc priest – but she had enough people who knew enough about disc priests who were willing to speak up, this was reinforced when the disc priest linked her recount with the disc priest estimated absorbtion add-on bit – and she was kicking all the healers butts. But this really makes me think, how careful you need to be when questioning performance, based on what we know about a class / role / assignment and the strength of our measuring tools, and that perhaps we should have given them the benefit of the doubt.

On Horde side on my realm in GDKP’s I have been told it’s not uncommon for there to be a loot rule of at least one random Reserve. or 1RR. This means that at any time during the run, the Raid leader & Organiser of the GDKP can say when a piece of loot drops ” Mine! – that’s my random reserve.”

Other are more specific – if” *blah* drops It’s mine, or I reserve one BOE . Someone – probably a Horde to Alliance transfer tried to reserve two BOE’s in their GDKP ad the other week. They were laughed out of trade chat. At least they were being upfront about their loot rules though. Those sorts of loot rules do not sit well on Alliance side.

Most GDKP’s go ahead without reward given to the raid leader. Other rewards are subtle, and not declared. The Goodie bag that was saved to the end of the run is forgotten about – the Primordials aren’t included as part of the auctions – sometimes it’s not their intent to forget, or the amount the primal might go for may not be consequential so it doesnt matter. I worked out that was how one frequent GDKP leader was making so many of the ICC patterns and then selling them cheaper then the AH – he was keeping the primordials

Is it fair?

A GDKP is still mostly a Pug run. We have at least one sponsored one on our side where last week the share each was 14.5 k gold. It has a waiting list. Most however you still need to sit in trade at the right time, hope another one isn’t forming at the same time, juggle your class and role needs, screen the potential peoples, balance your carrys and non carrys. Control bidding and looting and gold while in the run, run the raid, handle drama. Know strats. That’s not easy to do at the best of times.

A Guild master / Raid leader does it for free in their guild – but that’s a guild – why shouldn’t an organiser of a GDKP get compensated for their efforts?

unfortunately that is a reason for a lot of ninjas. -Their feelings of entitlement override what is ‘fair’. Fair – is making the rules upfront – and sticking to them. That way I get an informed choice.

When looking for a GDKP – a loot rule like 1RR would influence my decision to join. If the organiser – say does not have Deaths Verdict – and it’s good for his class – and he declares “1RR” then if I was after that same loot item – it means the opportunity to bid on that is gone for a week.

Reserving of much wanted items is also bad for the Pot. Heroic DFO’s in the earlier days was going for 45k gold – thats 1.8k gold each in the pot off one bid. Boe’s always sell well in GDKP’s because of their resale value on the auction house.

What sort of compensation should they get?

I find it unfair that we would pay 1k for someone to unlock heroic mode once for lootship – yet the person who ran it – gets nothing but the pleasure of 24 other peoples company and the equal chance to bids. Maybe some of the carrys are their friends.

However besides a cut of the pot – the primordials – patterns, a choice of loot, or a BOE – how do you be fair to the leader without being at least a little unfair – or depriving the remaining 24?

I would prefer that they get no reward = more things/gold for me, but I don’t believe that it’s entirely ‘fair’ but it’s certainly a preference of mine. No Funky loot rules.

What would I be ok with? – what’s ‘fair’ ?

Firstly. I would need to be informed of these rules before I started. Then I would weigh it up.

I might be ok with say a 1k payment. 40 gold each from the pot for a decent ICC run. Eg now 10/12 bosses.

Keeping the patterns from TOC/TOGC

One BOE

That about covers it what I would be willing to give up to be involved in a GDKP. I’m sure a lot of people wouldn’t even agree to those. But I think they are reasonable. If that was my only choice.

Say hello to the rug’s topography
It holds quite a lot of interest with your face down on it

The Nurse who Loved me – A Perfect Circle

This is what happens when you run into Mallable goo.

Mirror images will also not take diseases off you and Dispersion is awesome for taking some extra ticks. Heroic PP is Chaotic and the fight makes me think a lot about jelly.

2. Story from a Ninja’d GDKP –

There has been an increase of GDKP ninj’as on the server, This one actually happened the weekend before last, but a friend was in it and has been talking to a Blizzard GM about the outcome of the ticket put in to report the ninja . Due to privacy rules the GM would not disclose to where the ninja transferred to ( of course they server transferred) and the exact punishment – but he would at least receive at least the minimum 48 hour ban, had the bike he purchased stripped, epic flying removed, and basically was not left with much. As for the Pot ( some 80k) worth, it was not split between the people who had been ninj’d off because most of that pot didn’t exist.

Why? Because the Ninja had been the one bidding on the loot. Because I wasn’t there – I can’t say exactly what went down, but from the sounds of it he outbidded everyone else on the things he wanted. Of course he didn’t have any gold with him, I don’t know how much of the pot was him ‘ghost bidding” so the raid didn’t lose 80k of real gold,

I’ve added that to my mental list of suss behaviours – when the person who is running the gdkp keeps making excessive bids. No one ever questions the Raid leader. They assume that a) he knows the fights b) has a working mod c) can lead,d) has the actual gold they are bidding with, it’s not like we actually check, and I’m sure questioning the leader would get you a Raid Kick.

This is why I like vent for GDKP’s. You can tell more about a persons leadership style, abilities, and so on when you can hear them. If they are not speaking or sound like a whiney teenage kid (not all teenagers are whiney, some are quite mature and are capable raid leaders) – it’s your gold, your time – work out if its worth the stress.

My geekiness shall know no bounds when these make it to my pc room walls. When I turned 30 I contemplated at what age Should I stop wearing Skulls and X Bone tshirts – or Zombie Ninja Pirate Tshirts ( best non commercial link I could find. <3 Teefury Tshirts. I haven’t quite worked out either when I am supposed to stop get excited over things like space invader wall stickers either. Or Cookie Monster Earings Or a Tardis Iphone Cover

*sorry if you’ve already seen my Rugs Topography post. I accidently deleted it using the WordPress Iphone app because I fail, so I chucked in my weekend round up thingy.

I’ve said that – while anyone can run a GDKP – not everyone should, and if you want some more basic information on them Looking for More has a post ” GDKP: Get your Moneys Worth” with some information for people new to GDKP’s and Elitist Jerks has a very detailed explanation / comentary on the subject here

In Another TOC GDKP on Wednesday night we pull Beasts. Raid Leader dies in 1st min. Several other people die in fire. We survive Acid and Dread. On Icehowl we survived 2 crashes, on the 3rd someone got hit, we killed Beasts it with 2/3 of the raid dead.

We get to loot, and Raid leader has forgotten to set loot master – loot didn’t go through the Loot mod. 10 min later every who needed/greeded/DE’d ( Yes some of them did.) the loot handed it over to the loot master. Raid Leader asks for help with mod.

Mod is working by the time we killed Jarax – and surprisingly after one wipe on him and no one leaving we kill him.

There was no leadership – we may have killed things because we had some awesome people who knew their roles but every fight was messy as there were plenty who didn’t. It takes confidence to Raid lead, and this guy had 4 assists. I am assuming friends, and guildies, but not one tried to lead. In between other people in the raid joking about shoving pieces of anatomy in various places ( 2 more to add to my ignore list) I was trying to remind people to kill the adds. – Don’t run legion flame through Melee. On Twins me and another healer took up soaking duty because the raid leader said ” Just take any colour” There was no strats explanations/ refocusing. Just – lets kill sh*it

I heckled the RL once with a ” Don’t Run GDKP’s if you don’t know what you’re doing” but it should have included don’t try and raid lead if you can’t at least pretend to know what you’re doing” and some people in the raid just wouldn’t let up on the heckling – pointing out all his failures, and instead of helping solve his loot issues they complained non stop. He looted all the loot to himself on Jarax, and 4 people started shouting in raid chat ” He’s ninjaing.” ( he wasn’t)

He lost control, he lost respect.

In the end on 4/5 because he called it after one wipe on Anub and 800 gold each and arguments over the value of the loot from the 1st boss that hadn’t been added to the pot. The RL hadto give the gold to someone else to distribute because they couldn’t handle the stress of people tapping their foot, telling him to hurry. He told the raid to never speak to him again and logged off.

At the end, if I had been the one running the GDKP I would have burst into tears and not logged on for a week. But then I would have been somewhat more organised.

They could have saved themselves so much stress – so here’s my advise if you want to run a GDKP

Test the mod before you use it live. Grab some friends and guildies, and run a dungeon, or a lobie raid. ANYTHING. It will save stress and time, and make it a smoother run for everyone.

Check that you are loot master. TRIPLE CHECK before pull.

Work out what you’re going to do with Orbs/trophies / Patterns. Do you save it for a goodie bag at the end of the run – or Auction them off as you go. Communicate what you are doing.

Learn how to Manually add an item ( chances are something will screw up once)

Learn how to Pause bidding, relist an item, change the starting price

Don’t offer freerolls on items not bidded on. ( yes he did)

Work out if you are going to Raid lead or not. If your not – give it to a friend – handling gold, bids & leading is not an easy task especially if you are only new – trying to lead, or pseudo lead with a ‘ Of course everyone knows what they are doing – and will do it.’ doesn’t work. Ever.

If your the raid leader. LEAD. Don’t let other people do it for you.

One thing I will add – as an optional.

No Vent no Gold. You Shouldn’t need it for easy things – TOC, ICC 4/12 I know. But I think that success is more likely if you can get your communication right. Even the best dps may need prodding – or their focused changed. A raid leader is also more aware of more than things ( or should be) then the average raid pleb and vent allows that to be communicated. A Dps doesn’t really care that a tank is frozen in place with a debuff, a healer notices, and a good off tank would know, and when they got the fire debuff already be moving over to the other tank. But what happens if healers can’t see that specific debuff on that tank because of their raid frames, and think he is just taking normal damage, if the other tank is not aware, then one of your tanks is now frozen, on a wall, on the other side of the room. A ‘give me fire’ by that tank, or a ‘get fire to the tank’ on vent will get you a better response then a raid warning/raid comment.

But in regards to vent – if you don’t want to use vent. I would suggest that you either have no one in vent, or everyone in vent. Because I’ll lay bets that the person your telling to do something is one of the 5 people who is not there. If people are on vent, they won’t read chat, of they are relying on chat, then they aren’t on vent ect . Get your communication consistent.

I’ve talked about GDKP’s which are pretty prevalent on Blackrock before, It seems from comments, and other server talks, that it’s prevalence is a little unique. Sure other realms have them, but on Alliance side of BR there is at least one ICC 25 GDKP running every night during Aussie peak hours, and one or several during the day / our early mornings. Not as frequent, but still quite common are 25 TOC’s, and 25TOGC’s run.

Anyone can run them. Not Everyone should run them. Eg last night. The person who started the TOC 25 GDKP – had extremely poor english speaking skills, minimal communication, and a non working GDKP mod. It was salvaged by a good friend of mine who took over loot bidding, gold, and raid leading, all the while also main tanking. If not for them – the group would have failed.

Most of them are run through a GDKP mod, this keeps track of the pot, and controls the bidding – picking up on the gold bids through raid chat. But it can fail if the Loot master has to restart PC, or like the TOC last night find out that the Loot master can’t get it working after killing beasts . It had to be done manually – which is a pain, but it’s not the end of the run, enough people where keeping track of the loot so it was all fair

Getting into a GDKP

Some of them have varying requirements, and ‘qualifications’ min gear scores, achievements and Gold – if your running it you set the rules. Depends on how picky you are will depend on how long it takes to fill and also your chances of success.

Some of the time those requirements are negotiable. I got my 10/12 25 ICC ( with Some heroics) by linking my 10 man 10/12 and I think showing I had done at least 6/12 on 25. My 6/12 25 was done, because I ran a 10 man ICC with the 25’s raid leader the day before and had proven I was capable.

Some of its networking, finding out when the good runs are, proving yourself in other places. Just because it’s a Pug it doesn’t mean that have an automatic right to be there because you think you deserve to. I guess it is like a social judgement, if you’re not on the guest list, you’re not invited. It can also be who can vouch for you, friendship/guild relationship ( Eg a guild running it will take guild alts for gearing up.

It may also depend on your role, and how desperate they are – if you see this being spammed in trade for 5 min LF1 Rogue ICC 25 7/10 GDKP Pst GS achieve and Gold and you reply 5.7 Rogue 4/10 looking for New dagger. They may take a calculated risk and invite you, rather than keep 23 other people waiting. Especially if they are having issues finding that last healer.

I’ve never faked an achievement, I try to avoid linking gold – and I have rounded up my 13k to 15k – but most of the time you don’t need to lie.

I will lay bets that rarely will you have everyone in that raid meeting all posted requirements on the toon they are on, and that can also be why there can varying success.

GDKP Rules

The rules, or expected behaviour may also include

No flask/food / vent no gold.

I’ve not seen the flask/food rule punished for, but I have seen stern warnings in regards to the vent requirement.

If You cause wipes/perform very poorly you may get kicked

There may be Min bids on some items eg Tier tokens, or trinkets, or Heroic gear to stop people from bargain shopping and keep the pot healthy

There may be a payment for a Kingslayer to unlock Heroic modes. ( standard fee is 1k on 25) 40 gold each taken from the Pot.

Patience may be required when the run is ended, and the gold is being handed out. If the Loot Master says – I WILL TRADE YOU. And you spam him with trade invites. You may miss out on any gold when you get removed from the group. It’s distributed with a method, so they aren’t losing their own gold and they can track who has already gotten their share of the gold. They might work from group 1 to 5 or who ever is stacked close to them. Any way they do it they are trying to keep it fair.

Imagine 24 people trying to trade you saying. Gimme gold now – what do you think the error rates would be and thus and the loss of trust factor on this system would be?

Successes

My biggest pot has been 6k from a 1o boss kill in ICC, I spent 14k in that one though, for which I got a Tier Token, and a 271 Heroic Neck . I got Reign the other week for 8k in a TOC – but in early days ICC Reign was still going for 20-30 k gold, which was way out of my reach.

Even though the TOC last night only got 4/5 it was still a success because there was control, and a confident leader. We killed stuff without a wipe fest, people got loot. People got gold. After one wipe on Twins because people restless we were down 3 by this point, and a couple demanded their gold. A ready check was done, and a majority chose to stay. More people leaving would have spelled the end of the run smaller pot, less loot – so they got a choice – leave now and no gold. They signed up for a 5 boss kill. A 3 hour run, 50 wipes would be unreasonable expectations – but after one wipe on twins, and they wanted to bail. That is not reasonable. Of course they stayed, and we killed the twins. Success!

Sometimes you need to pick and choose your GDKP’s I guess wisdom comes with experience, and this is me trying to pass on some of mine. It’s still a risk, though. I’m a big fan of GDKP’s ( if you can’t tell ) I’ve not been in one that was ninja’d ( touch wood) But they have become very much part of the Faction and Realm culture – back on Dath’remar the odd one gets run, but only by top end guilds, and often with preset invitee’s organised on forums, and strict gold requirements.

Failures

People lie to get in, fake achievements and if 24 people negotiated their way in, or the Raid leader expected to be carried then obviously your more likely to fail.

I’ve done ones that disbanded on Marrowgar trash, couldn’t kill beasts, got called at Saurfang, wiped on boat – just like any other pug . I can pretty much garantee a 4/12 boss kill on any I do on either of my priests though now.

I’ve seen more runs fail on attitude, and I guess Synergy and poor leadership then gear and experience. Like any pug, one wipe can be enough for the breakdown of the entire raid. F this says a random dps. 2 people leave, then a 3rd, a 4th, and then it just becomes too hard.

I’ve even tried a couple of TOGC 25 GDKP’s – one got that bad that half the raid left group in anger after a 6th fail at Faction champs. Of course there was still gold to be distributed – so those who stayed got more.

If your main tank abandons you at Saurfang, and your only planning for 4/12 – unless the pot is decent you may have issues trying to fill. I’ve been in a few TOC 25’s where getting someone in for Anub hasn’t been too difficult because of the loot that might drop, and if they aren’t planing on doing the run, an easy couple of hundred could be appealing.

Why I like them

I spend in GDKP’s, I make money off GDKP’s

I don’t have to be in a guild to see content, or get gear, and I get to profit from the experience

Good value loot – My Healing Priest Ostaraa got new boots from TOC last night- they were a upgade, I checked the AH after, and for 2k there were boots about on par with them, The ICC crafted boots were 6 k. For 800 gold I got new boots, and with my share of the pot just under 800 – im outof pocket only a small amount for an upgrade.

There is also more motivation for a GDKP to stick it out. There is a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. People are less likely to leave – I trust your interest in the sucess of this is as great as mine, and a stable raid increases the success. Greed is a powerful motivator.

Trust

There is still a big trust factor – currently Blizzard will still intervene with gold pot Ninja’s – there was chatter in trade last week of one person with a respected guild tag ninjaing, and server transferring. I’ve done them successfully with Guildless, little guilds, big guilds. You still need to be able to work as part of a team with strangers. I’m noticing less carried people these days, or the gaps between OP, and carried is getting shorter as people get geared up.

Maybe GDKP’s will get phased out. The structure of the content and timing now is good for this. People have the geared alts to do them, giving people opportunity to see content, get gear that they wouldn’t otherwise.

I guess BR has had lots of practise getting it right, – I’ve never run one, and probably won’t so I can’t give you advise on how to build the trust the people on your realm need to get them off the ground. 25 random people doing something that requires skill, and involves gold. There’s a bit at stake there – you need people with spare gold, you need people, with toons that are free to use their raid ID’s as they choose – and often some realms struggle for 25 man raiding. It is a lot to ask unless you have the right population.

In conclusion, if you have made it this far – I have fun in them. I love the flexibility, I like the ‘easy’ gold, I also like that RNG means nothing when you can pay for what you want. I don’t believe it means I have been carried because I have purchased some of my upgrades – I still have had to read strats for bosses / Hardmodes, still had to perform, heal, dps, dispel. 25 lazy people still means a fail and why fail when you can profit!

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